"Since I well knew that it [the statue] would be admired by English travellers, I gave orders for it to be broken to bits, in order that malicious tongues might not proceed to relate that I am searching for statues for my countrymen, and not for treasures for the Sultan."
It would discourage, at any rate, people better disposed!
Lady Hester, grumbling the while, got out of the difficulty of the Ascalon expenses by the aid of economy. At that moment, she boasted of not having a debt.
CHAPTER X
IN THE MOUNTAINS OF THE ASSASSINS
TIRED in body and irritated in mind, Lady Hester revived at Mar-Elias. At that moment, Pierre Ruffin, French chargé d'affaires at Constantinople, an intimate friend of the amiable Pouqueville, had his eye on the Englishwoman and warned Caulaincourt, whom he supposed to be still Minister for Foreign Affairs, that definitely settled in Syria, "whose climate sympathised better with her frail health, the illustrious traveller had received from Great Britain presents to distribute to the local authorities of the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon, under the ostensible motive of her personal gratitude for the courtesies which they had lavished upon her." Was he in ignorance, then, that England had refused to share in the Ascalon expenses?
Sometimes, she dreamed of forming an association of men of letters, artists and savants which she would invite to travel all over the Orient under her auspices. She aimed at founding an Institute, on the model of that which Bonaparte had carried away to Egypt, and of which she would naturally be the head. Leaving the women to groan and sigh at the doors of the Academies, she was leaping the barrier of ancient customs and traditional manners and creating on her own level. Sometimes, she discussed the expediency of a journey in Abyssinia. Sometimes, she drew up memoirs on the marvellous properties of bezoar in the cases of the plague and mania. From time to time, she cast a glance towards that Europe from which she had fled without regrets. Sharply, she judged her fellow-countrymen, stigmatised emphatically the English statesmen as "senseless boobies whom their ignorance and their duplicity have exposed, not only to the laughter, but to the maledictions of generations present and to come," traced of the Restoration a picture engraved by a master hand and denounced the English policy against France, a policy of which she unmasked the faults with a singular perspicacity and an impartial violence.
"Cease to trouble yourself in regard to me," she was to write on April 22, 1816, to the Marquis of Buckingham. "I shall never return to Europe, even if I were reduced to beg my bread here. Once only I shall go to France to see you, James and you; but I shall go to Provence, not to Paris, for the sight of our odious Ministers running about everywhere to do evil, would make my gorge rise too much. I shall not be martyr for nothing. The granddaughter of Lord Chatham, the niece of the illustrious Pitt, feels herself blush at being English. What disgrace to be born in that country which has made of its cursed gold the counterpoise of justice, which has placed humanity in fetters—that country which has employed valiant troops, intended to defend its national honour, as an instrument of vengeance to oppress a free people, which has exposed to ridicule and humiliation a monarch who might have gained the hearts of his subjects, if the English intriguers had left him alone to reign or abdicate.
"You tell me that the French army—the bravest in the world, that which has made more sacrifices for its national honour than no matter what other—would not listen to the voice of reason; and you think that I should believe it! Never! If a woman, poor and miserable like myself, has produced a very strong impression on thousands of savage Arabs, as I have done, without even bearing the name of chief, simply by surrendering to some of their prejudices and in inspiring in them confidence in her sincerity and in the purity of her intentions, is not, then, a king—a legitimate king—able to bring this army, to which he owes his crown, to a just appreciation of its duty? Undoubtedly, he would have been able to do it and would have done it, if he had been free to act. What ought one to expect from men who, during twenty-five years, have been their most bitter enemies, except what has happened?
"You may be disgusted; I care for that not more than a penny; for there is no soul on earth who has had, or will ever have, any influence on my thoughts and actions."
She maintained also a connected correspondence with all the people who knew how to hold a pen. Beaudin galloped across mountains and valleys. It was no sinecure that of being her secretary! One day, sent on a mission to St. Jean d'Acre, he slept in a mill in the environs of Tyre with, he declared, his head on his luggage and his horse's bridle in his hand. Nevertheless, in the morning, the horse had disappeared. Painfully he continued his journey, and received on the way a laconic letter from Lady Hester: "If you have lost your mare, find her."